Species: Calopteryx aequabilis

The larval life cycle is typically two or three years long (Martin, 1939). Flight period is from mid-June to early September in British Columbia (Cannings, 2002), early June to early September in Washington (Paulson, 1999), mid-May to mid-September in Oregon (Johnson and Valley, 2005), May to August in California (Biggs, 2000), mid-June to early September in Idaho (Logan, 1967), June to September in Minnesota, Michigan, and Wisconsin (DuBois, 2005), mid-June to late August in Ohio (Glotzhober and McShaffrey, 2002), mid-May to mid-August in Massachusetts (Nikula et al., 2003), and late May to late August in Nova Scotia (Conrad and Herman, 1990). Males are territorial defending oviposition sites and this is one of the few damselflies that court females. Courtship involves fluttering back and forth in front of a perched female and by males flinging their bodies onto the water's surface in courtship displays. Mating usually occurs on vegetation very close to the water after which the male returns to his territorial perch to guard the egg-laying female. Females lay eggs singly submerged below the water's surface. Either the tip of the abdomen or the entire female may be submerged. Adults are often found perched on streamsides in emergent vegetation often within a few feet of the shoreline. They may also fly low over the water in a bouncy manner (see Cannings, 2003; Conrad and Herman, 1987; DuBois, 2005; Martin, 1939).